A former News of the World executive at the centre of the phone hacking scandal is to edit one of Britain’s best-known magazines, the Standard can reveal.

Ian Edmondson has taken over at Loaded — known as the “original lads’ mag” — and plans to take “it back to the glory days”.

The 43-year-old former NoW news editor, who was arrested on suspicion of illegal voicemail interception, said: “I want to get Loaded back to the glory days of the Nineties. I want it to re-establish its ‘bad-boy’ image, when it used to put Liam Gallagher on the cover.

“It’s all very well having pretty girls on the front but people can get that for free on the internet. I’d love to have Joey Barton on the front cover. I’m also going to introduce politics because I think men are interested in it.”

At its peak in the late Nineties Loaded sold more than 450,000 copies a month. By this year sales had fallen below 35,000.

Mr Edmondson, who was suspended from the NoW in January last year, is alleged to have instructed private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who was jailed for phone-hacking in 2006. Scotland Yard arrested him on suspicion of phone hacking last April. He has not been charged.

Head of news at the newspaper from 2005 until last year, Mr Edmondson told the Leveson inquiry there had been a “culture of bullying” that “emanated” from editor Colin Myler.

He said: “It’s a case of ‘you will do as you are told’ and you live in that environment. It’s not a democracy at a newspaper. It’s autocratic.”